


A Game of Two Kings

by almostannette



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Chess Metaphors, First Meeting, Gellert Grindelwald's origin story if you will, Implied Vigilante Justice, M/M, Minor Character Death, Seer Gellert Grindelwald, Soulbonds, Soulmates, Unreliable Narrator, Visions, bloodpact, implied abuse of a minor, losing a loved one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 04:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21173159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostannette/pseuds/almostannette
Summary: In chess, you had to lay traps, move your pieces carefully, and sometimes, you had to sacrifice a piece to ensure you’d eventually win the game. Gellert was not one of the players in this game of chess, he recognized. He wasn’t even the king. But he could make a sacrifice to give Albus an advantage, who’d turned him into a piece on the board without Gellert noticing. He could do this to help Albus’ cause.





	A Game of Two Kings

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by my attempts at teaching myself how to play chess - I was not very successful, but it made me want to write Grindeldore, so here we are.

_ “All great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice (...) the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”  _ \- Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

**I.**

_ Summer, 1899 _

Gellert had just finished setting up the pieces on the chessboard. It had taken him only a second to do so, long enough for him to flick his wrist and watch as the pieces separated themselves into neat rows of black and white. Technically, he wouldn’t have been allowed to cast the spell - the laws in Britain differed from those of his Austrian homeland. The British Ministry of Magic required young witches and wizards to be at least seventeen years old to perform spells outside of school. In Austria, that age limit was sixteen, and Gellert would have found it stifling… if he’d ever had any respect for nonsensical rules in the first place.

The village where he’d taken temporary refuge, Godric’s Hollow, was mostly populated by witches and wizards. The Ministry couldn’t possibly monitor every spell cast in the area. As long as Gellert refrained from using any spell dark enough to make them suspicious, the authorities would have no reason to interfere.

He mentally debated if he should ask his aunt Bathilda to play against him, to see if she was any good, or if Gellert had to play against himself, as had been the norm at Durmstrang. At school, he’d been hard-pressed to find anyone who’d take him on in a game of chess. Well, Gellert couldn’t blame them. Nobody liked losing all the time.

Before Gellert could make up his mind and settle on the best course of action, there was a knock on the door.

He gave his aunt a puzzled look. He hadn’t been aware that she was expecting guests that day.

“That will probably be Albus,” she said, smiling to herself as though she’d made a joke only she understood. “One of my neighbors, a bright young man. I wrote him a letter, telling him that you’d arrived and asked him to come over. I thought you’d probably want to make friends quickly since you don’t know anyone here except for me, and Albus has been going through a lot… I feel like he’s in need of a friend.”

Gellert blinked. Had his aunt just admitted that she invited her friendless neighbor to meet him? Was he going to have to babysit her little pet project? He was about to decline meeting the kid, it was not Gellert’s job to make someone feel better about themself.

However, since it was his first day in Britain, and he didn’t have anywhere else to go unless he went on the run, he decided to swallow down his anger this once and indulge his aunt. After all, he could always just scare the neighbor’s kid into not wanting to associate with him anymore, it was not the first time people had recognized Gellert for what he was and had the good sense to run.

What happened next would become a lesson for him - even he, Gellert Grindelwald, wizard extraordinaire, could be wrong sometimes. He was expecting some pathetic kid from Godric’s Hollow who had to resort to Gellert’s elderly aunt for socializing but instead, the person who walked into the room was  _ him _ .

Gellert could admit to being wrong, and boy, had he been wrong. He had never expected to meet a person who mirrored him in every way, who matched him in terms of intelligence, cunning, and vision. However, the world was full of surprises and if the boy his aunt had invited over to have tea with them happened to also look like a young Greek god, who was Gellert to complain?

Albus didn’t seem to complain either since his eyes clearly lingered on Gellert’s form longer than they would have, had he not been interested in getting to know him, both in the intellectual and in the carnal way.

Aunt Bathilda seemed very pleased to have Albus visit. She babbled a little bit about how Gellert could use some friends and how happy she was that Albus had agreed to come over. She was sure that he and Gellert would get along famously.

Behind his aunt’s back, Gellert rolled his eyes, making sure Albus saw it. The latter tried to suppress a grin but failed miserably.

“Albus Dumbledore, at your service,” he said, still smirking, and stuck out his hand for Gellert to shake. “Pleased to meet you,” he added.

Gellert summoned his best smile, took the offered hand and tried not to visibly delight in the pleasant shivers running down his spine at the skin-to-skin contact. “Gellert, Count of Grindelwald, at  _ your  _ service,” he said, echoing Albus’s greeting and feeling slightly bereft when the young Briton let go of his hand.

“_Count_ _of Grindelwald?_” Albus repeated, raising an eyebrow. “I thought witches and wizards on the continent did not go in for titles of nobility either? It’s a muggle custom, isn’t it?”

“My  _ muggle  _ father happens to be an Archduke of Austria,” Gellert said. “So, I’m actually a half-blood. Do you happen to have a problem with that?” he asked in a pointed undertone.

It had been a rather torrid affair, at least in the eyes of the ruling House of Austria. Gellert’s father had not gotten in trouble for marrying an Englishwoman, oh no, that would have been the least of their troubles. Gellert’s mother, Diana Bagshot, had been a commoner, at least in the eyes of muggle nobility and had been no good match for an Austrian archduke, which hadn’t bothered Gellert’s father in the least.

Instead, they had gone for a morganatic marriage. Gellert had always found it funny, how it sounded as though the muggles had named the marriage after Morgan le Fay, one of the most powerful witches who had ever existed. Gellert’s father had pulled strings and gotten the Viennese Court to bestow the rather symbolic title of Countess of Grindelwald on his wife, after a tiny, unimportant village in Switzerland, which had once been under the authority of the Austrian ruling house.

As a last jibe against the court protocol, his parents had named their one and only son Gellert, a Hungarian name, after the people which had given the Austrians so much trouble in the past.

Naturally, Gellert and his mother had never been welcome at court and the family had preferred to stay at Nurmengard, making the place more hospitable than even the grand palaces in Vienna, thanks to the help of magic.

For all intents and purposes, Gellert had had a happy childhood - his mother had taught him about magic as soon as she’d taught him to talk and walk. His father had given him lessons in history, politics, and diplomacy. Once he’d started his schooling at Durmstrang at age ten, a couple of pureblood students had thought they could put Gellert in his place. He’d quickly shown them how wrong they had been to base worthiness on a category so arbitrary as blood status.

Instead of sneering at him, like he’d half-expected him to do, Albus laughed and shrugged. “No, I’d be the last person to have a problem with that. I’m a half-blood, too. My mother is… well, was Muggleborn,” he added, a shadow crossing his face. “She passed away recently.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Gellert said quietly and meant every word. “I know how you must feel. My own mother died three years ago. Dragon pox, there was nothing they could do. In addition to that, I’m also sorry if I came across as too confrontational, I just… you know, Durmstrang isn’t too liberal when it comes to witches and wizards who aren’t pureblood.”

“They don’t allow Muggleborns, I’ve heard,” Albus remarked. “What do you think of that?”

“You want my honest opinion? It’s a load of rubbish,” Gellert said, trying and failing at suppressing a grimace. “I think the whole Statute of Secrecy is a load of rubbish. It should have been abolished long ago.”

“That’s certainly an interesting opinion. Why do you think so?”

“If I say that magic is a gift, you would agree with me, no?” Gellert asked. “A small number of individuals is blessed with the gift of magic, while the majority of humans - the muggles - don’t have magic.”

“I agree,” Albus said freely, unconsciously fiddling with the handle of his wand, which he had tucked into the pocket of his tweed jacket.

Gellert wondered what material the wand was made of. You could tell so much about someone just from studying the wand which had chosen them.

“Now, we’ve established that we have a small group of people who have powers the general public does not. This small, blessed group could either use their gift to benefit the masses, and improve living conditions for everyone, or they could hide and use their powers only for their own good and to keep them hidden. So, what do you think is more beneficial to society as a whole?”

Albus mulled over Gellert’s words and finally nodded. “I can see your point.”

“It’s so obvious, isn’t it? I’ve told you, my father’s an aristocrat…”

“Which, by extension, makes you an aristocrat as well, Gellert,  _ Count of Grindelwald _ ,” Albus interrupted him, but with no malicious intent. Rather, Albus’s mischievous grin combined with the twinkling of his bright blue eyes did rather funny things to Gellert’s stomach, but that was neither here nor there…

“Yes, alright, I’m an aristocrat. Guilty as charged,” he said and stuck out his tongue at Albus for a split-second before becoming serious again. “I assume you’re familiar with the saying ‘noblesse oblige’? You see, I believe it’s the same with magic, a sort of ‘magie oblige’ if you will. Wizardkind needs to come out of hiding and make peace with the muggles before it’s too late - before the muggles will have gotten so far with their technology that they don’t  _ need  _ magic anymore… and if they ever find out that wizards and witches could have helped them with their problems all along but chose not to do so? They’d be very resentful, don’t you think?  _ I’d  _ be very resentful. Anyway, I believe wizards and muggles should work together, pooling their knowledge. It’d be for the greater good, right?”

Albus blinked a few times, obviously needing some time to adjust to Gellert’s ideas. They were radical, he knew, but radicalism ran in his veins - his father wrote articles criticizing the Austrian monarchy for various socialist publications.

Later, Gellert would figure out that Albus had thought about a world in which muggles and magic-users were not at odds with each other, a world in which his sister had never gotten hurt and abused by some muggle boys, a world in which his family was still intact, and that that was what had prompted him to smile and say: “I like the way you think, you know that?”

It had been - as they say - the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

* * *

**II.**

_ Interlude _

The summer of 1899 had been like a fever dream, too good to be true, and Gellert should have known it would all come crashing down around them. It ended with Albus’s little sister lying dead between them, her frail body twisted and mangled from the parasitical force inside her which had turned on its host in Ariana’s final moments. What might have been a quick, almost painless death due to a curse had been prolonged into a desperate, yet hopeless battle.

Gellert was shocked he hadn’t seen this coming - say what you will about teaching Divination as a subject at school,  _ he _ was a Seer. You couldn’t force visions, they came naturally and unpredictably, but something as monumental and traumatic as Ariana’s death? He ought to have seen this coming!

Yet, the whole summer, it had seemed as though his Inner Eye had been clouded with the same vision replaying over and over again, and he couldn’t make sense of it, no matter how hard he tried.

When he’d told Albus about it, his boyfriend had offered to help him with interpreting the vision, but Gellert had brushed him off. Albus didn’t care for Divination, and anyway, Gellert’s visions didn’t need interpreting. Usually, they had the courtesy to be straightforward and it was easy enough to see the meaning in them.

This vision, however?

Gellert couldn’t understand what was so meaningful about seeing an ancient, wrinkled wizard falling to his death.

He supposed it made sense that his inner eye had shown him visions of death, but why the death of a complete stranger and not the person who would actually die? Why not Ariana? Why some stranger?

Albus had taken Ariana’s death as a warning sign. He had gone too far and would never surrender to the lure of power again (and resist the temptation of love, too, for that matter).

Gellert, too, had drawn his conclusions from the unfortunate incident.

Magic had to become widely accepted and the muggles would need to reconsider and accept it as the gift that it was, not treat it as an abnormality. During the short time he’d known her, Ariana had seemed like a sweet girl and it was nothing short of a shame that some stupid boys had been able to cripple her magic until it turned against her.

Gellert couldn’t blame Percival Dumbledore for what he had done - had it been his child, Gellert would have also moved heaven, hell and everything in between to get justice. What world did they live in in which one could molest a little girl and get away essentially scot-free?

Had Ariana not gotten involved in their fight, had Albus and Gellert had been able to duel it out like adults, let their tempers cool off, and remember what they valued in the other, they would have been able to work it out and overcome their differences, Gellert was sure of it. How could they not? After all, the magic of the blood pact sung in their veins, influencing them to make up, to get back together, to talk it out… life without his bondmate seemed incomplete, as though he was only half of what he’d been before.

Albus had chosen his side and it was not the same side as Gellert’s. They had become enemies now, and all too soon they would have to start moving against one another.

* * *

In the end, Gellert alone had been not strong enough to realize his vision of a more equal, undivided society. The people hell-bent on maintaining the separation of wizardkind and muggles had won and Gellert paid the price for it. 

He’d lost the war, his freedom, and the Elder Wand. At least he could rest in the knowledge that the Elder Wand was now in the possession of the only other wizard on the planet who Gellert judged to be worthy of such power.

And yet, he was also aware that Albus would shy away from using it. He would instead do his best to waste away in an office at Hogwarts, just like Gellert was wasting away in a prison cell at Nurmengard.

They’d never called it his castle in the newspapers, no, to the journalists, Nurmengard had only ever been his prison. Whenever Gellert had seen such a reference, he’d rolled his eyes. Yes, there were prison cells at Nurmengard, and some of them had even been occupied for a while, but every medieval castle in the world had prison cells. Why would they define Nurmengard by only one of its functions? It had also served as his stronghold, as his base of operations… it had never been just a prison.

Ultimately, that was the problem with people. Most of them oversimplified things, because they couldn’t handle anything else. They loved to divide the world into neat little categories. Wizards and muggles. Women and men. Good and evil. Black and white.

Couldn’t they see that any divide was just an illusion? That the world was made up of infinite shades of gray?

Of course, they couldn’t. Gellert had learned that lesson long ago - it wasn’t as though he didn’t have time to think. No, if there was anything he didn’t lack, it was time. He had all the time in the world on his hands and didn’t know what to do with it except  _ think _ .

His mind had always been his refuge, it’s what had kept him sane at Durmstrang, watching his classmates struggle through learning wand movements and incantations. All the while, Gellert had preferred to flip magical education on its head - he’d much rather read the books on magical theory first than stumble through spells, blindly following his teacher’s instructions.

Perhaps that was because magic had always come so instinctively to him - he didn’t need to learn the Latin, Greek or Old Norse incantation. Why would anyone bother with it, if you could just use magic to manifest your will, provided you were aware of your magic and your will was strong enough? The wizards and witches of old times didn’t have proper incantations, nor did they necessarily have wands - they had known that those things were essentially crutches, used by the weaker magic-users to enhance the results of their spell-casting. A true wizard or witch, in touch with their magic and cognizant of the way magic ebbed and flowed in the body, aware of its inherent fickleness… incantations and wand movements were just limitations placed on their prowess.

Back in the day, when he was powerful and free, people had said of him that his wand movements were unique. The ones who’d compared him to a conductor using his baton would have come closest to the truth. In a way, he was conducting the magic to do his bidding, and with the Elder Wand as the conduit, his powers were amplified almost beyond belief. Complex rituals became mere trivialities and when he thought back to what it felt like to hold the Elder Wand… it was easy to see why it had acquired the reputation of being unbeatable. The power rush it gave you was addictive.

There was just one small detail all the legends missed to point out. The Elder Wand was as fickle as magic itself and one had to be worthy to become its true master. And the wand would always choose a victor as its master, or so Gellert thought. It had made sense to him that the wand had passed from his hand to Albus’ so many decades ago. Albus was probably one of the few people worthy of wielding such power, except for Gellert himself, and Albus would also understand the immense privilege being the true master of the Elder Wand brought with it.

In the solitude of Nurmengard, the visions found him ever more frequently, almost like they were taunting him. Gellert saw visions of the future play out before his Inner Eye and was powerless to do anything about it. Nobody would listen to Gellert Grindelwald, the wizard who’d tried to become a dictator, or so the newspapers had said. The wizard who’d tried to rule like a king, who was cruel, brutal, and senseless.

Nobody would believe a word Gellert Grindelwald said ever again.

He started to understand how insidious a punishment it must have been for Cassandra to be able to see the future and yet not be able to prevent the horrors she saw in front of her Inner Eye.

An old friend was keeping him company in his lonely prison cell - the vision of the old wizard falling to his death would not leave him alone. It returned at least a few times a year and with every repetition, it left Gellert more and more shaken, since he couldn’t understand what it  _ meant _ . Sometimes, he thought he recognized the man, but other times… he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was meant to symbolize his own downfall?

In the end, Gellert had to become an old man himself to find out what his vision meant. Nearing the end of his life, he was over a hundred years old. The ICW had certainly provided first-class healers who looked after him and made sure that his punishment - having to live the rest of his life imprisoned in his castle - would last as long as possible.

The calendar on his wall and the view from his window told him that summer was about to start - all around Nurmengard, the alpine flowers started blooming and sometimes, if the wind was right, it would carry their scent all the way up to the window of Gellert’s cell. In such moments, he closed his eyes and thought back to his childhood, to careless summer days spent in the surroundings of the castle, hiking through the mountains with his parents.

One time, they had spotted a Tatzelwurm and Gellert had been so enamored with the small, dragon-like creature that he’d begged his parents to catch it and tame it, so he could have it as his pet.

“No,” his mother had said. “We don’t imprison wild animals, Gellert. Prison is only for criminals, for dangerous individuals. This creature hasn’t done anything wrong, so we mustn’t take away its freedom.”

Gellert had been disappointed but he’d understood and let the creature have its peace. It had been the one and only time he’d seen a Tatzelwurm in the wild and something told him the creature had sensed that Gellert had been thinking about catching it, taming it, and making it into his pet.

Now, a century later, he understood.

Freedom was the greatest gift of all and Gellert hadn’t been free since the day he took up his wand to fight Albus in their very first, fateful duel. It had decided their fates and put them on a path neither of them would have wanted in the very beginning… they ought to have been together, not fighting each other.

After all those years, there was still the blood pact, which had irreversibly changed his magic, made it stronger but also stranger… Gellert could sense Albus’ presence like a persistent little headache which wouldn’t go away, no matter what he did, and he was sure that Albus felt the same.

Who knew that the mistakes one made in one’s youth could have such an impact on the rest of one’s life?

(And after all this time, Gellert still couldn’t bring himself to think of Albus as a mistake.)

When he went to sleep that night, with the scent of wildflowers in full bloom still in his nose and childhood memories in his mind, he’d expected to have pleasant dreams. Instead, for some indiscernible reason, he dreamed of a castle.

Something told him that it was Hogwarts, although he’d never been to the famous British wizarding school.

A young blond man, or rather, a boy, was holding someone at wand point… Gellert recognized the boy’s opponent in a heartbeat, it was the old man from his recurring vision.

When he saw the wand the old wizard was holding, Gellert felt like his whole being was invaded by a mixture of dread and excitement. He recognized the nodes of the wand, the runic markings, there was no mistaking it… the aged wizard holding said wand had to be Albus and if he looked closely he could see that he still had the same bright and twinkling blue eyes, though now they were hidden behind a pair of half-moon spectacles.

The light in those wonderfully intelligent and beautiful eyes would soon be extinguished forever, and Gellert was powerless to stop it. He’d seen it happen so many times before, had been haunted by that image for his whole life, but he’d never put it together before, had never recognized the old man as Albus.

Age had not been kind to him, had rendered his features unrecognizable, but the same could be said about Gellert himself. They had peaked in their youth and from then on, it had all been downhill.

Albus let himself be disarmed by the boy, but why? The Elder Wand was wrenched from Albus’s hand and Gellert knew how it must feel to suddenly be bereft of all the addictive power the wand promised.

Still, it was illogical. Albus was certainly one of the greatest duelists on the planet, there was no way a young, desperate schoolboy would be able to disarm him, certainly not with the horrendous stance and the sloppy wandwork the blond boy exhibited. If Albus hadn’t wanted to be disarmed by the boy, it would never have happened, Gellert was sure of it. Even then, Albus was nearly as adept at wandless magic as Gellert was, he would still be perfectly capable of defending himself…

What was going on?

More people joined the scene, but Gellert only had eyes for Albus. They had fought against each other, on opposite sides of a war, but Gellert had always maintained that there was something special about the bond he shared with Albus and if he had been in any position to fight against the assailants, he would have used all the magic he still had in his body to fight against them, to hold them off…

The sheen of sweat on Albus’s forehead, the feverish glint of his eyes, it was proof that Albus was not feeling well.

Poison, if Gellert had to guess. Add to that the withered hand, which could only have been the effect of a particularly nasty dark curse, Albus was doomed.

Another man joined the scene and Gellert took a second to catalog his features. Sallow skin, coupled with an unfortunate haircut, a morose disposition, and a fitting name.

“Severus,” Albus begged in a voice on the point of breaking. “Please.”

The faces of the people surrounding him seemed to mock Albus as he was pleading with the man named Severus.

Only Gellert understood that Albus was not begging to be spared. On the contrary, he was begging for it to end. He wanted Severus to make it stop and Severus, as Gellert knew he would, obeyed.

Gellert watched, powerless, as Severus pronounced the incantation of the killing curse - Avada Kedavra - with the utmost disgust, but still with enough conviction and willpower that a flash of green light left the tip of his wand and hit Albus squarely in the chest.

Gellert knew how his vision, his dream, how reality would continue, Albus would topple and fall backward, off of the high tower they were all standing on, already lifeless… but Gellert didn’t see anything anymore.

The moment the curse had hit Albus, the moment his soulmate had lost his life, a shockwave had gone through his whole body and he awoke, screaming at the top of his lungs...

Gellert had been at the wrong end of the Cruciatus curse and not even the pain inflicted by the most potent torture curse known to wizardkind could compare to the feeling of being torn into half, of every cell in his body rebelling against the loss of the presence of Albus’s magic, which had been irrevocably intertwined with Gellert’s own magic for so long.

The guards arrived in his cell and he was begging them for release, for something to ease the pain, he would go mad, he would lose his mind, as he had lost his soulmate. It felt like his flesh was being torn from his bones and Fiendfyre was licking at the very essence of his being.

His connection with Albus, which both their magic had fed for nearly a century, was being severed in the cruelest way possible and Gellert had never known suffering like this.

His ordeal lasted for the next twelve hours until the pain started to ebb away and morphed into a feeling of lack and loss, as though he had lost a limb somewhere.

From this day on, Gellert Grindelwald was never the same.

The only thought which had sustained him through his prolonged suffering was that at least Albus had gotten a quick death.

* * *

**III.**

_ Spring, 1998 _

Lord Voldemort had come to visit him at last. It had only been a question of time until the reigning Dark Lord of Britain would come to Gellert’s humble abode and demand information regarding the Elder Wand.

Truth be told, Gellert was astonished it had taken him so long.

Even more astonishing was the fact that Lord Voldemort wouldn’t understand why Gellert wouldn’t tell him what he knew about the Elder Wand. He threatened to torture him, to kill him, and Gellert was not intimated.

If there was one lesson Albus and Gellert had learned, so many summers ago, then it was the knowledge that love was the most potent force of magic in the universe.

They had sealed their love for one another in an ancient ritual based on blood magic and seared the essence of their love into every cell in their body. Albus might no longer be alive, but not even his death could undo all the changes the ritual had wrought, the traces it had left in Gellert’s blood, on his soul, in his mind… 

Gellert Grindelwald had known love in all its awful glory and here was a sorcerer who, on the pain of death, could not comprehend what it could make people do.

“You don’t understand,” Gellert said, laughing in his visitor’s face. “And you will never understand anything.”

“What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind, old man?” Lord Voldemort shrieked in rage, his voice sounding barely human. “Haven’t you heard? I killed Albus Dumbledore, as surely as I will kill you if you don’t tell me where it’s hidden!”

Mismatched eyes stared into red, snake-like ones, and Gellert prepared for his final moment of glory. He’d been skirting around Lord Voldemort’s mind ever since the sorcerer had entered his cell, acting with the subtlety a Slytherin should rightfully understand and know to expect, but that Lord Voldemort had never fully comprehended, preferring to rely mostly on brute force and drastic measures, like Horcruxes.

Having died and come back, his soul was the least human one Gellert had ever encountered. His defenses were strong, yes, and he expected them to hold up to the Legilimency efforts of the vast majority of witches and wizards. Gellert, though, was not on the level of the vast majority. No, far from it.

Lord Voldemort wanted the Elder Wand? Gellert knew, of course, who he’d lost the wand to and he could make a well-educated guess as to what Albus had done with it. Albus, kind, brilliant, exciting Albus… he’d been hurt and terrified to such an extent that he would have resisted wielding the Elder Wand to the betterment of wizardkind. He remembered the conversations they had as adolescents, Albus would have preferred to let the power of the Elder Wand die with its last master.

And that last master? Well, it wouldn’t be Lord Voldemort, that Gellert could guarantee. 

In chess, you had to lay traps, move your pieces carefully, and sometimes, you had to sacrifice a piece to ensure you’d eventually win the game. Gellert was not one of the players in this game of chess, he recognized. He wasn’t even the king. But he could make a sacrifice to give Albus an advantage, who’d turned him into a piece on the board without Gellert noticing. He could do this to help Albus’ cause.

Lord Voldemort ought to be afraid, Gellert thought, his lips curling into a smirk.

And with that, he let his magic loose, let it sing, and dance, and batter down the protective mental walls surrounding Lord Voldemort’s thoughts. It was perhaps the most extraordinary, draining and mad feat of magic Gellert ever performed. He tore through the barriers and wreaked havoc in the loveless, egotistical depths of Tom Riddle’s mind

Such a counter-intuitive last name, Gellert thought. Riddle. There was nothing mysterious or enigmatic about Tom Riddle when you got right down to the basics. He was an egomaniac and unable to consider anyone’s well-being except for his own. Gellert had never been like that - he could be ruthless and cunning, oh yes, but he’d always known not to cross the line into true insanity.

He was surprised to spot the Resurrection Stone in Tom Riddle’s memories. The Gaunt family had had it and turned it into a piece of jewelry, never knowing, never understanding the true nature of the treasure they possessed. They had thought the Peverell family was only valuable for the purity of their blood, and not for the combined intellect and achievements of their three most famous scions - Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus.

In a twisted way, Gellert figured, the Resurrection Stone had served its purpose when Tom Riddle had turned it into a Horcrux. It had helped resurrect him and had made him so much less than human for it, glorifying all the wrong things in the world, and resenting the right ones.

But Gellert had learned, oh, he had learned and he would pass on that knowledge and just maybe, Tom Riddle had never been afraid of love before, but he, too, would learn.

When he’d seen the Resurrection Stone turned Horcrux in Tom Riddle’s mind and the curses he’d placed upon its hiding place, Gellert had put two and two together - Albus’ blackened hand in the vision of his death made sense now. Albus would have not been able to resist such a temptation, would have wanted closure at all cost... 

He used up every last bit of magic he had left in his body and progressed from simply invading Tom Riddle’s thoughts and feasting upon them to something more challenging. Now, Gellert started forcing his own thoughts and feelings into his adversary’s mind. Not just any thoughts, oh no, he chose the ones that hurt the most, implanting defeat, loss, betrayal, and _pain_ into Tom Riddle’s mind to an extent that he’d never felt before. He let him get a taste of the incredible ecstasy it had been to seal the blood pact, to feel ancient magic settle into his veins, creating a bond with Albus, and the pain of being torn in half when he’d lost his bondmate.

Tom Riddle had thought love was a weakness in which only the foolish indulged. It could be a weakness, of course, but love could also serve as the greatest asset, and Gellert made sure to impress love so deeply in Tom Riddle’s mind that he would never be able to stop considering it, he would, in fact, start doubting himself and, if allowed to progress along far enough, would start to hunger for it as he’d only hungered for immortality. And, like immortality, he would have to realize that it was unattainable, at least for the likes of him…

Gellert’s powers were quickly running out and he could feel the rush of magic recede, bringing him back into his frail, old body with its innumerable aches and pains. His breath was coming in needy puffs, his lungs not able to get enough oxygen into his systems. Black dots were clouding his vision and he could feel his consciousness start to slip away from him.

“Stupid old man, what have you done?!” Tom Riddle screamed, his voice too high to be human, his beastly features distorted in a grimace of pain and rage. “You’ve had your chance, but Lord Voldemort will not show you any mercy now!”

Gellert summoned his last strength and a smug grin. In the end, in that last game of his life, Gellert recognized he’d just been a pawn. But even a pawn could serve its purpose, and if that purpose was just to make some trouble before sacrificing himself? So be it.

“You don’t understand, Tom,” Gellert said, but it came out more like a wheeze. No matter. “And you will never understand. I’m not afraid of what you will do to me,” he added, laughing out loud. “But _you _should be afraid, Tom Riddle. You should be very afraid.”

Voldemort’s features contorted into a grimace of blind, seething rage.

Be like the third brother, Gellert told himself. ‘Greeting Death as an old friend, they departed this life as equals,’ that’s how Beedle the Bard had decided to conclude the Tale of the Three Brothers.

There was truly no need to be afraid.

Voldemort raised his wand and pronounced the famous two words, followed by the characteristic flash of light.

Gellert had never noticed it before, but it really was a rather pretty shade of green.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> Important: I'm not a native speaker and this fic is currently unbeta'd - should you have come across any mistakes etc. I'd be glad if you pointed them out to me!
> 
> A few notes:
> 
>   * This fic works with the assumption that Albus did not destroy the blood pact and their historic duel in 1945 was just an illusion, like in my fic “The Puppeteer’s Demise”, which can be found here <https://archiveofourown.org/works/18021335>
>   * A Tatzelwurm is a cryptid that is said to live in the Alps, where Nurmengard is located. It’s a cross between a small dragon and a cat: <https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Tatzelwurm>
>   * Gellert's family background was loosely inspired by the following Austrian/Austro-Hungarian aristocrats: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_John_of_Austria>, <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_von_%C3%96sterreich-Ungarn#Kindheit_und_Jugend>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria>, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduchess_Elisabeth_Marie_of_Austria>
>   * This fic works with the premise that Gellert legally lost his title of nobility in April 1919, following the so-called "Adelsaufhebungsgesetz" ("law for the repeal of nobility") in Austria. From that moment on, he would have legally been "Gellert Grindelwald": <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelsaufhebungsgesetz> (unfortunately, Wikipedia does not have an English translation of the article, so I've linked the German one)
> 
> If you liked this fic, please consider leaving a comment, kudos, or both! <3


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